Food for the Future is a unique project in which the Province of Flemish Brabant, Rikolto (Vredeseilanden), Colruyt Group, University College UCLL and KU Leuven together with young people, experts, farmers, etc. look for ways to feed the growing global population in a sustainable way. Food for the Future wishes to fuel the debate by bringing together people from the business community, governments, consumers and civil society organizations. They have chosen 3 products: Andean crops, pulses and seaweed.
I'm going to investigate why they have chosen their products and if they are sustainable or not. So my research question is: Why did the project food for the future chose the products: Andean crops, pulses and seaweed? Are these sustainable?
Hello everyone,
The food that we eat today comes from a lot of places around the world. This way of producing our food isn't sustainable enough in long term. With the growing world population, a lot of extra food production is going to be needed. This food can be produced in countries around the entire world, but it can also be grown close to the cities where the food will be consumed.
Nowadays many people move to an urban environment, rather than stay in rural areas. This is mostly the case because almost all of the jobs now are located in the big cities. As a result these cities expand themselves but not only in size, also in hight. A lot of the cities that exist today have a lot of high rise building at their centre. Because of the grow of cities and the population density a lot of food is needed to feed all the people that live in there without the land that is needed to grow al this food. This is why many developed countries import food from all around the world to feed their people, but this food need to be transported first. The transportation of all of the food that travels around the world contributes to almost 1/4th of all the carbon emissions around the world.
The problem to this solution? Growing crops close to where it is needed, near the cities. The only problem is that there is not enough space to grow all of the food, but a solutions has been found for this, vertical farms. Vertical farms can use up less space while producing way more food than traditional farms. These vertical farms can be used in combination with hydroponics farms, the growing of plants in water instead of soil, to be very cost efficient while still yielding a lot off food.
These vertical farms can be placed anywhere in or around cities where there is space left: parks, parking lots, but also abandoned warehouses. These abandoned places can be filled or replaced with farms that can together produce a lot of food.
Vertical farms are almost always very labour efficient, only a few people are needed to run one, so it will also help the potential unemployment in cities, but not a lot. Another positive thing about a farm like this is that they can run year-round because of the controlled climates that is used in them.
Urban Crop solutions is a Belgium company that sells scalable, city-based, vertical plant factories that can be placed anywhere if there is some space left. The factories have to ability to mimic any climate to make plant grow possible every time of the year. They also have very optimised light systems that makes sure that every plant gets light 100% of the time for maximum crop yield. Water that is given to the plants is recycled as much as possible, so that nothing is wasted.
An example of the work of Urban Crop Solutions is a banana nursery located at the university of Leuven in Belgium. Here they are working on grow new banana plants in climates that are more extreme compared to the climate nowadays on earth. After the plants are grown they are checked for resistances to the potential climate change and if any trees look promising, they are transferred to the African highlands to ensure the future of the local farmers there.
Hallo iedereen/hello everyone
Sustainable food (just like all issues) starts with ourselves but on our own we can't get the maximum out of sustainable food. Therefore we need to go all the way to its source: the farmes. I think in the future sustainable food will be very important and much needed and I think there are a lot of possibilities to make our food more sustainable by making changes to the way it's produced.
First of all lets start with our local (crop) farmland. The export of food emits a lot of carbon dioxide (which is obviously very bad) so if we maximize our local farmland we are going to need less or even no food from far export. Also our local farmers aren't sustainable enough already.
So: we need to make changes so we can get the maximum food and sustainability out of our farmland. think about for example:
- - getting more crops out of small space
- - get enough energy/water/(fertilizers) in a sustainable way
- - crop diversity
- - using different crops according to the season
- ...
=> i'm going to do my project about how we can increase the sustainability on our local farmland. There are so much examples of how me can increase sustainable farmland so i'm going to reduce my project to only a couple of examples.
my research questions:
- What type of spaghetti/pasta is the most sustainable?
- How can I make my own spaghetti more sustainable?
first research:
A mind map from the different types of pasta I eat (it’s in Dutch so my further research would be easier)
-> the general types are the ones I know I eat through the year
-> the specific ones are the types I normally don’t eat, the recipes are from Libelle
My pasta = penne with bolognaise sauce
-> not sustainable
The pasta’s I’m going to research specific:
- spaghetti with veggie bolognaise
- penne all’arrabbiata
How can you get people to implement climate-changing measures?
What is our goal?
We would like to get people to implement climate-changing measures. We want to know, why some people do not implement them and what they'd need to change their opinion. Is lack of information? Financial reasons? Do we need laws? It would also be interesting to know where the costs arise above all from doing nothing about the climate. It would be really nice if we could find someone who could answer this question.More...
Animals in the city - How do they affect our environment?
We want to research the topic of animals who start to life in the city. Us humans take away their habitat and as a result of that action, they have to evade to our cities and our enviroment. How do they affect us? Can we do something to change it back to the way it was before?
We plan to do interviews with people involved in that topic and maybe even go on tours to see the impact and the consequences with our own eyes.
Anabel & Joelle & Sandra
What is our goal and how can it be achieved?
What exactly is the effect that our group wants to trigger with our action?
We want to show people that green houses are a service to our urban environment. Leaves and branches act as natural dust filters for the city air. Green roofs are therefore a real contribution to ecological building. People should not underestimate this.
By which methods / tools should this effect be achieved?
We would like to get more information on this topic by interviewing people who already have experience with greening roofs. We also want to prepare ourselves for the topic with internet research.
With which strategy should this effect be achieved?
We would like to pass on the knowledge we gain through interviews and research to the population, especially to companies. It should encourage them to More...
To reduce CO2 emissions in cities, I believe that urban traffic must be reduced.
To achieve this goal, I believe that various measures can be taken.
- Reducing access to the city or charging a fee.
- Reduce parking in the city
- Creating a car-free zone or even a car-free city
- Only allow certain vehicles into the urban area (electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, etc.)
In my project I would like to find out which of these measures make sense or where are the strengths and weaknesses of the respective variants.
Perhaps, in the course of the project, there will be other possibilities to keep traffic away from the city.
To cope with this, I would include a city in my project.
Our Topic
How can we improve the city climate?
Our Goals
In our project we want to show you, how you can improve the city climate. Another goal is that we want you to start thinking about our environment in general and especially in cities.
How should the effect be achieved?
First, we have to study for ourselves, so we may could get in touch with an expert. When we have the required knowledge, it is easier to reach our goals.
Our Ideas
- City trees
- Renewable energy (for example solar panels)
- E-cars
- Public transport / bicycle
Who is the target audience?
Everyone.
Petar and Leandro
Who?
Fabrizio Roncoroni & Yanik Schwarz
What?
On which way does a city park help the city climate?
Our goal is to show off that the city parks are a necessary part of a city and aren't just for the pleasure of the people.
Possible parts in the project:
- The Location of a park
- Structure and content
- Examples of environmentally friendly parks
How?
We gonna do deeply researches on the internet and if possible some interviews with experts on this topic.
The project will be planned in the «IPERKA»-Method and will use only professional deposited sources and carefully done studies.
Audi
ence
Young people whose intentions are to move to a big city like Zurich in the near future and people in general who are already living in a city.
I would like to make a project about sustainable investing. It would be an interesting topic, because the investment market is huge and it would be better for our world if the investors would put their money in companies, which have a healthy mindset about our ESG (Environmental, Social und Governance). That would give the companies opportunities to improve their strategies.
This project would fit me perfectly because I still work in a bank in my afternoon-off (tuesday, thursday, friday) and I am really interested to make a connection to my work and the environmental & technologies in a project. I also have the enquired needs for doing a project like this.
I want to make a investment suggestion like in my work. For example a customer who wants to invest his money, but only in sustainable companies (also called futura companies), he tells me he has 500 thousand francs to invest. My goal is to make a suggestion with many futura companies and his money splitted up, because diversity is really important if you wanna invest your money. Then I will would present the companies in this suggestion and why they are sustainable.
I want to keep this investment suggestion in swiss companies, so I dont see it neccessary to cooperate with people abroad.